


Seagull Central

by Utopiste



Series: 30 days writing challenge [2]
Category: Marvel 616, West Coast Avengers, Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Frank Ocean Propaganda, Mentions of Cold Pizza, Post-West Coast Avengers, Roadtrip (sort of?), Seagulls are Evil, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 02:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20520434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Utopiste/pseuds/Utopiste
Summary: It goes like this: after the shitshow that was the West Coast Avengers and the very unwanted, very awful revelations about her parents (and god, hasn’t Kate had enough of those already?), Kate told Americahey, wanna go on holidays again? We could avoid every single supervillain in the country for a week and make it a road trip.Clint, who had been sitting here on their couch eating Doritos and spreading orange power all over their new throw pillows, just laughed and said it would end terribly.





	Seagull Central

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day two of CommodoreCliche's writing challenge: "Character A to Character B: 'holy crap this is a terrible idea'"
> 
> doesn't this SCREAM hawkeye quip to you? because it did to me
> 
> this is short. cute. and gay

“Holy crap, this was a terrible idea,” Kate says, about twenty minutes into the fight.

“Oh, really? What’s making you say that?” Clint shouts, forgoing his bow to directly sucker punch a giant seagull as it tries to pick at his straw blonde hair – Kate sort of wants to make a joke about fries but realizes the timing would be a bit off for this crowd. She resolves to make it later, when the seagulls are not on a Hitchcock movie level of nightmarish and they are eating post-battle cold pizza on the roof of someone else’s condo. (Her reasoning goes something like: after all, if someone has enough money to buy a condo in Los Angeles and does it, they are basically just begging for superheroes to cover it in dried blood and leftover pizza boxes. It's their civic duty.)

As she fights off another seagull making a desperate dive for her bow, she catches Clint's eye as he signs something injurious in the line of _told you so, asshole._ Kate pretends she doesn't know how to read.

After the shitshow that was the West Coast Avengers and the very unwanted, very awful revelations about her parents (and god, hasn’t Kate had enough of those already?), she told America _ hey, wanna go on holidays again? We could avoid every single supervillain in the country for a week and make it a road trip. _ Clint, who had been sitting here on their couch eating Doritos and spreading orange powder all over their new throw pillows, just laughed and said it would end terribly. As for Gwen, she had said something in the lines of _ of course it will, haven’t any of you heard of a swimsuit special yet?_

Kate hadn’t paid attention because Clint was almost never right and because though she would die for Gwen, she always said all types of weird fortune cookie shit and also was dating Quentin Quire, so her wisdom was questionable at best.

After leaving the headquarter keys to Johnny, who was almost too busy playing a weirdly sexually charged game of Mario Kart with Noh-Varr to notice (and Kate would have to deal with that, really, but the entire point of holidays was avoiding her issues, so whatever), they enjoyed a few hours of skipping ahead of the road at last. Kate drove, sunglasses and cherry red lips, strands of hair escaping from her ponytail and flying into her face every so often before America would lean over from the passenger seat and tuck them away again with calloused fingers that trailed across Kate’s cheeks in a way that shouldn’t quake shivers down her spine. America’s hair didn’t get messed up, probably another unfair alien perk, the jerk, and she would laugh when Kate reproachfully pointed that out, picking another song on her dumb gay playlist and blasting Frank Ocean so loudly in the convertible that the entire highway could enjoy the crappy sputtering speakers of Kate’s car. Then America would complain loudly about how slow human cars were while Kate slalomed between all the poor fools who had chosen to drive across California on the same day as them, and they stopped at every rest area they found to get iced coffee or let Kate paint her toenails a vibrant shade of purple or let Lucky sniff around at his own pace, and things were perfect for a few hours.

Then they had come to another rest stop, and America absently kicked at an obese seagull which had been bothering Lucky, and all hell broke loose, _ again._

The worst and best thing about being cursed to a superhero life was that at least they had still been close enough to headquarters for America to bring Clint, Quentin and Gwen over with smoothies still in hand and weirdly cheerful _ I told you so _ faces. Hence: Clint's sign.

“Don’t even fucking say it,” America growls as she punches a couple of seagulls into another dimension. "Don't you dare say it."

Quentin gives her a venomous look and starts to open his mouth when Kate accidentally grazes his cheek with a slightly misaimed arrow that still explodes in the middle of a flock of birds, because her aim is impeccable. Twenty gone, only two hundred left to go. Yay.

“You did that on purpose!” he shouts as he ducks under another pair of claws, nonchalantly throwing it at a tree with another handwave. “And also, a group of seagulls is called a colony, you illiterate jerk.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kate shouts back. “And stop reading my mind!”

“If I have to hear you gush about America’s biceps for thirteen minutes in a row while we’re fighting _ ninjas-” _ he starts before Kate finally reaches him and puts him in a headlock, uncaring for the way birds are clawing at her back even if it will hurt like a bitch later on in the bathroom while America cleans her wound, whisper-shouting _shut up shut up shut up shut UP._ When she looks up from Quentin’s mess of pink hair, America is already looking back from where she is hovering over the rest of them, an amused smirk on her face, and _ this _ is how Kate dies. Not from otherworldly Eldritch horrors that take her parents’ faces or her actual evil parents, but from sheer gay panic.

“Quentin!” she still yells, trying to convey both reproach and cool indifference and how bruised he will be when she is done with him. She winds up sounding whiny even to her own ears.

“What did Quentin do again?” Gwen says, sounding close even if Kate can’t quite see her.

“Save me, Gwen!” he yelps instead. “I’m your boyfriend! She has me in a headlock!”

“Eh,” Gwen says, shrug audible. “What did you do again?”

Letting go of Quire only because a particularly nasty seagull has left a bloody gash on her shoulder and she physically cannot hold on anymore, Kate turns around to the sight of Gwen and frowns. Instead of brutally murdering the crazy killer birds, she is trying to feed one some bread like a grandma at a duck pond.

“No adopting crazy killer seagulls, Gwen,” she orders.

“But they won’t take a lot of space, look at them-”

_ “No.” _

Gwen pouts and widens tearful eyes and Kate ignores them in favor of shooting an electric arrow at the flock that formed around her, knocking out at least a dozen animals. An exploding arrow (courtesy of Clint, who hasn’t met an arrow he didn’t want to make go _ boom) _ shoots above her head and takes out the remaining ones, and suddenly they’ve traded a swarming mass of white feathers and angry beaks for a handful of pissed off big birds who are counting their losses and trying to fly away as America mutters _ oh no you don’t _ and goes off after them.

And then it’s a scramble of reassuring the few families and roadies who had locked themselves inside the station while this whole mess unfolded, explaining that_ no, there's no more danger now, you can come out, no, we’re not the Avengers, haven’t you heard of the West Coast Avengers? oh alright, you haven’t, well, we’re a thing now, no we don’t know who was behind it, yes maybe it was climate change, who the fuck knows. _

When Kate is done with it – and who, who the fuck thought she would make a good team leader – Clint is smirking at her with America in that way he does when he is secretly proud of her but doesn’t want to admit he is feeling an emotion. Kate has a mix of dried blood and stuck feathers and bird shit down the back of her favorite crop top, so she refuses to let this be A Moment.

“Honestly, I hate to say it, but even that was better than having to listen to Johnny’s bisexual awakening freakout and Noh-Varr’s _ do I really want to date my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend _ freakout,” Quentin says, scrapping the same disgusting mixture out of his _ Gwenpool in a pool _T-shirt.

“You could also not listen to it,” Gwen points out, but she is also holding his bandaged hand and has given up on adopting another monstrous pet, so Kate thinks dating Quentin has – weirdly, unrealistically, unnaturally – been good for her.

“And miss out on all the drama?” he whines. “I don’t see you complaining when I helped you get the best wager on them.”

“Are you all betting on your teammates, who are also, by the way, two of my ex-boyfriends, getting together?” Kate says, trying to use her best team leader voice.

This is obviously a losing battle, from the raised eyebrows Clint throws her way. “You do realize the _ dating two of your teammates _ part doesn’t make it sound good at all, right?”

“Shut up,” Kate groans. “America, take them away. Please.”

“Sure thing, boss,” America says because she knows Kate hates it as she punches thin air to break it into an interdimensional door to the living room of their headquarters. “You heard her, folks.”

Quentin complains all the way into the star-shaped hole in reality, Gwen just throws them a peace sign and grins under her mask, and Clint says a terribly unmentor-like and plain terrible double entendre about keeping _ protected _ at the beach, and then they are all gone and it’s only America, Kate, a dozen scared people watching them, and the huge star-shaped elephant in the room.

“So, guess these holidays are a bust, uh,” Kate sighs. “Do you want me to drive us both home or would you rather dimension jump there?”

America looks at her like she’s a lunatic, which is nothing new for their dynamic. “What do you mean drive home?”

“We just got attacked by giant seagulls,” Kate spells out for her.

And Quentin pointed out her obvious, glaring crush on her best friend. And her favorite crop top is ruined. This is the worst road trip ever.

“So?” America shrugs off. “You told me the Airbnb you got us had a _ jacuzzi.”_

“Sooo,” Kate drags out, unsure. “You still wanna go?”

America smiles, slow and crooked and unfairly charming. “Isn’t it your duty to introduce me to all of this Earth’s customs? As our team leader, of course.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kate says, still a little dazed by the sheer intensity of having an America Chavez smile directed at her. “Definitely.”

“And well- Noh-Varr used to talk about this Earth thing you helped him ease into- I think it was… Hot makeout?” America adds, and she’s definitely messing with her, the asshole, but they laugh together as Kate punches her shoulder and hurts her hand. They are still laughing when they take off, and from the way America stares at the side of her face when she focuses her eyes on the road, still grinning so widely her cheeks hurt, she thinks that maybe this entire mess didn’t have to be perfect to turn into _ something. _

**Author's Note:**

> and then they had sex in the jacuzzi. the end


End file.
